The vision thing is dead

The vision thing is dead, said Ian Berry. "Nobody believes what you put on the wall. If no one believes in your vision, it's a disaster."

Mr Berry, CEO of Australian firm, Remacue, was speaking at the 12th Infocomm Commerce Conference at Suntec City. The conference and exhibition was organised by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

Instead of vision, look for a cause that is beyond profits, said Berry. Every day, there is no reason why anyone should wake up hungry, and yet over 800 million people in the world are hungry, he noted. Businesses should look to causes that help alleviate world hunger and other concerns.

From corporate values to employees’ virtues

It sounds good to have a statement of corporate values. But you should transform values into virtues that employees internalise and practise. An example of a virtuous company would be Starbucks, the chain of cafes across the world. People like to work in Starbucks, because the company engages in fair trade. It takes its coffee beans as much as possible directly from the small farmers, thus maximising their profit margin.

Today's generation of workers want to be associated with organisations that are ethical, that care for the poor. Ethics, causes and virtues are more important than business, said Berry, who observed that "if you do things right, the money will come".

Nobody likes to be appraised

On the day-to-day running of a business, Berry suggested companies stop appraising their employees. "I have never met a person who likes to be appraised," he declared. "So, why are you still doing it?"

Engage your employees, and help manage their performance, instead of measuring and evaluating them. More on Berry's talk, here.

Facebook has no vision

Earlier in the year, I read a Businessweek report (March 9) that Facebook’s 23-year-old founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted he doesn't know how to articulate the company's overall vision.

In the past, he claimed Facebook's mission has been misunderstood. He said: "We have a chance here to build a platform that fundamentally changes the way people communicate. How many times do you get a chance to do that? Zero or one. So we just have to go for it."

In the comments box for the Business Week article, I added my two cents:

It is wonderful to hear the CEO saying he doesn't know what Facebook's vision is. That's the right approach. Most companies put up mission statements on what their vision is, but they don't believe in it anyway, and no one else believes it too.

As long as an organisation is commercial in nature, it's vision and mission and goal is simply to make money in the smartest, shortest (legal) way, period. Because Facebook doesn't really know what it wants except to do good and help people, it keeps stumbling into one success after another.

Keep it that way, please, and not be derailed and distracted by mission, vision and other corporate hypocrisy.